Episode 210: Work Less, Achieve More: Tales from a 4-Day Workweek

 
 
 

Imagine a workweek where you set achievable goals, don’t have meetings that could’ve been emails, and infuse efficiency and automation into everything you do. The best part? By doing so, you save an entire day, so three-day weekends become a regular thing. 

 

It sounds idealistic, but it can be your reality...today. 

 

Erin gives you improve it!’s 5-step framework for implementing a four-day workweek and the results that have come with this shift. If your team is feeling burnt out and you’ve tried everything, this is the episode for you. 

 

ICYMI – Your Post-Episode Homework: Follow @itserindiehl on Instagram and lookout for the giveaway of Shorter: Work Better, Smarter, and Less—Here's How by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, listen to last week’s episode with Dr. Morgan Cutlip, and share today’s episode with someone who could benefit from its message. 

 

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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. 

This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. 

When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl. 

You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online! 

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Episode 210 Transcription

Erin (00:08): 

Improve it. Improve It! Podcast. Hello my friends. Welcome to today's show. I am so excited that you're here. I am Erin Diehl and on paper I am the founder and CEO of Improve It, an improv comedy expert, a top 1% podcast host. That's what you're listening to right now. I'm a new author and a keynote speaker, but on soul y'all. I'm a mama. I'm a recovering perfectionist turned failfluencer. And I'm your new director because every day of your life is an improv scene. So if you are new here, welcome to the show. If you are a regular improve it Peep. Welcome back. This is version 4.0 of this podcast and we are just getting started. So I'm so glad you're here. I wanna do a couple of quick housekeeping items before we dive into today's show. My new book, I See You, A Leader's Guide to Energizing Your Team through Radical Empathy is available for pre-order. 

Erin (01:28): 

Get it while it's hot. That was your commercial interlude, but you can find it on Amazon. You can find it on Barnes and Noble, or you can go to my new website itserindiehl.com and it will take you right there. Now here's the deal on it's aaron deal.com. If you pre-order, you get a free gift with your pre-order purchase, all you have to do is go to Amazon, Barnes, Newble, whatever you fancy your local indie bookstore. If they've got it online there, buy it. Put the receipt number in at our website and you will receive a free one hour to 30 minute digital course called Radical Empathy. It's a digital workshop. It is built in conjunction with the book. The actual timing of the video is around 35 minutes, but to do all the work included, it'll probably take you about an hour. 

Erin (02:24): 

So it is a high ticket item. It is going to be on sale after the pre-order. So get yours today for free by pre-ordering the book. All you need is that pre-order receipt. So get yours now. And while you're on the website, you can also grab your meditation album. It is the I See You Meditation album and it gives you eight different five to 10 minute guided meditations to help you lead with intentionality, lead with purpose, lead with empathy. So you will find these meditations will help you jumpstart your morning. There's one specifically to Yes and in your morning, there is also a meditation called Visualizing Your Ideal Day, where it helps you get through a visualization process to manifest the day of your dreams, a k a, the life of your dreams. The best part is this album is $11 and 11 cents. 1111 baby. 

Erin (03:22): 

So that's it. Go to itserindiehl.com to get yours today. And finally, if you've not listened to last week's podcast episode with Dr. Morgan Cutlip, make sure to check it out. It is filled with juicy nuggets of wisdom when it comes to this month's theme of radical rest. Dr. Morgan Cutlip is an influencer, an author, and she helps you by giving you tips and tricks and techniques to help lessen that mental load burden and offer you a lot of support. So check out this insightful episode because it's here to help you practice radical rest. Now, all month long of October, you have heard from guests who specialize in burnout, specialize in parenting, as well as some behind the scenes looks at what we are doing here at Improve It to improve our rest. Well, we're adding to our to-do list and taking you along for the ride because rest is tap of the list when it comes to to-dos around here. 

Erin (04:29): 

So let's dive right into today's episode and I want you to stay tuned at the end of today's show for a very special giveaway and announcement. So my friends, my Improve It peeps, my longtime listeners, if you've listened to the show for a long time, you know that this summer I had a concussion and I suffered from what is called post-concussion syndrome for about three and a half to four months. This was probably one of the darkest times of my life. I have always considered myself an upbeat positive person, but I will say that during this time there were periods of depression involved. I was completely almost paralyzed with my vision. It was almost as if I was seeing the world in a seventies show. It was very pixelated. I had severe headaches, nausea, it was hard to do, simple everyday tasks and it really, really was a very eye-opening experience for me, pun intended, because it rewired my brain. Literally. I'm talking to you with a new brain today because of this long period of wavering on anxiety and depression 

Erin (05:57): 

And just trying to figure out how to regain the strength that I had with my old brain and realize how to use this new brain. I really figured out my priorities. I now have them in check. I now know my worth, and I feel the most alive I've felt in years. I am much less anxious than I have ever been, and I know that I broke a lifelong pattern of not feeling like I was enough. So when I was eight years old, I moved from my hometown in South Carolina to another town in Georgia. And I know at that period of time in my life, I developed this feeling of not being enough because I wanted to be liked. I didn't feel like I really fit in. I was navigating a whole new world. My life was ripped out from under me. That pattern continued until I was 23 years old where I was trying to become an actress, a talk show host, and I kept getting rejection. 

Erin (07:09): 

After rejection after rejection. I was out of work. I was piecing together gigs and I really didn't feel like I had enough to offer for the first time in my life. This pattern also creeped in when I was 27 years old. And I was working for a leader who would do anything to get to the top and would put my mental health and physical health in harm's way to do so. I was talked down to, even though I was doing a really good job, I never felt like I was doing a really good job. It just never felt like it was enough. That pattern led me to a lifelong existence of people pleasing perfectionism, overachieving, because when I would achieve, I would get instant gratification. I was worthy. Finally, somebody noticed me. I got praise, I got words of affirmation that I was doing what I was supposed to do. 

Erin (08:17): 

And so I started this business at 30 years old. I'm now 40 years old and for the first 10 years of this business, I ran myself into the ground. Now internally, my team was awesome. We set strong boundaries. We didn't work on nights or weekends. I knew that's not the life that I wanted to give them or the life I wanted to have because I had it. But I also didn't necessarily set that boundary with my own internal dialogue. My internal mind was on 24 7 and she barely knew how to turn off. In the 10 years that I created this business, the only time that I took a step back to reflect on what we built was during Covid, when again, it was all ripped out from under me. 

Erin (09:13): 

And I know that I creatively blocked myself During this time, even though I was creating this business and this company, I was not reaching my full potential because I was never taking time to rest. I was constantly in go, go, go mode. And this became especially apparent as I became a parent, okay? I would go straight from work into mom mode. Now, over the past three years, I now work from home. There is no separation between work and mom. I'm just constantly on. I'm constantly on. There's no off switch except for every three weeks when I would go get my nails done and sit in the spa for an hour and a half, or I could squeeze in an early morning workout before my son woke up. There were a few girls trips sprinkled in there, but few and far between. 

Erin (10:08): 

So this concussion was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but also the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me, it forced me to slow down. It made me find a team of healers. I now have an energy healer, a craniosacral therapist, a therapist, an intuitive coach, and a holistic chiropractor on speed dial, speed dial, like literally I could call them today and be seen quickly. I took a sabbatical, which you heard an episode about, and if you haven't heard that episode, check that out too. It's, it gives you clear step-by-step instructions on how you can take one too. But what I realized was, was that the more time I took to clear my own mind, the clearer my purpose became and the clearer my purpose was, the clearer my priorities and the clearer my priorities, the more intentionally I started to live my life and the more intentional my life became, the more joy I felt and the more joy I felt, the more joy I had to give. You see the pattern here, right? I realized I need more time to be off, to think, to clear my head more time for me, I needed a day to be me. I need a day 

Erin (11:53): 

To get my life in order to get my brain in order. So our team is trialing a four day work week for the entire duration of Q four in 2023, depending when you're listening to this show, this is October of 2023 when this is launching the entire quarter. So October, November, December, we will be trialing this four day work week. Now we are doing this with intentionality on purpose, and we're using key metrics for success with our priorities in mind. We're automating, we're creating new processes that serve us and serve our clients. And in fact, I'm gonna tell you this, I don't think I've ever seen be more efficient, intentional, or get us or us get things done as quickly as we are right now. Like we are a machine and it is well oiled and it feels so good. So I want to share with you the five step framework that we are using to create this four day work week. 

Erin (13:05): 

I'm gonna share it with you in hopes that you take these best practices, you apply them to your life, and you can share this with senior leadership. Or if you're a leader listening to this, think about how you can use it and apply it to your team. So this is a five step design thinking structure and the first step in this structure is framing. Framing what we are about to do. So giving a clear objective, a frame that, a framework that we can rely on, we can go back to, and that has clear objectives and clear outcome. So we started the reading the book Shorter by Alex Sujong, Kim Pang, and it's all about how to work better and smarter and less. It's filled with case studies of teams and organizations who've used this four day work week from a variety of different industries. 

Erin (14:05): 

I mean, it talks about from hospitality to restaurants, to people in construction to people who are in the manufacturing industry. They are all doing these four day work weeks. But there are case study after case study in there of how it's improved the mental health efficiency and how people on those teams are working smarter, not harder. So we started by reading this book collectively as a team. I got this inspiration from Jenna Kutcher, who's another amazing podcast host, and Amy Porterfield, who's also another amazing entrepreneur and podcast host. They led their teams to a four day work week. They've been doing their businesses a while longer than I have, and they also 

Erin (14:51): 

Have much bigger teams. So they read this book and implemented this trial period with their teams in literally a very short amount of time. So we read this book probably in What are we now? So in August I read, I got this idea at the end of July and had the team read the book in August and we decided what our framework would look like from there by drawing from the other examples in the book. So we decided that we would trial Fridays off as we already had no meeting days on Fridays. We weren't allowed to meet internally or externally on those days. That day was spent as a catch-up day for our team. Anyway, so the three day weekend sounded amazing. We knew we all wanted to take the same day off and that we would go for an eight hour workday to an eight and a half hour workday. 

Erin (15:49): 

Monday through Thursday. We decided that our open vacation policy, which is a take what you need policy with a minimum of three weeks, would go from the take what you want to 10 days off in 2024 if this trial period worked. And we would limit the vacation days during this trial period. So I didn't have any vacations scheduled. My team really didn't have any vacations scheduled during Q four. It was a perfect opportunity to trial this. So we're giving ourselves vacations by taking these Fridays off. But the first step, and you'll read this in the book shorter if you read the book, is to frame what it looks like. So that is our framework. Step two in this design thinking structure is to inspire. So in this phase, we started to pinpoint our inefficiencies. So we realized that we were having meetings that lasted way too long that we were having meetings that could have been an email, you know the names on the internet. 

Erin (16:54): 

We were, we were the culprit. We had meetings that could have been an email. We realized that our Slack channel, although it's an amazing tool for keeping communication going, is also a bit of a distraction and gets us out of flow. So we really needed to work on that as an efficiency standpoint. We realized that there were processes within our sales that could have been automated and we realized that the sales process as a whole needed to be refined and more efficient. So keeping this meetings that could have been an email in mind, top of mind framework, we realized let's do all of this through a Google document and in timed meetings to make sure that we're all inspired and on the same page. So we started a brainstorm in a Google doc that we all added to, and then we talked through that Google doc in a timed meeting. 

Erin (17:50): 

It was a 30 minute meeting and we kept it as high level and efficient as possible. So that's step two. First you frame it, then you inspire my team right now. I am so proud of them. I have never seen, I've worked with Jennifer for seven years. She is so inspired by this idea and she is so inspired by creating more efficiencies in our business. Same with Nicole. I am just floored at how we are automating so much of our marketing process and coming up with ideas on the fly. It's amazing. Okay, so then the third phase that you read in this design thinking framework in the book, shorter is all about ideation. So we took that time to ideate on the processes that needed improvement and we realized that if you are gonna have a meeting, no agenda. No agenda, okay, no agenda, no agenda. 

Erin (18:43): 

Every meeting has an agenda. Even if we know what we need, generally need to go through, it's a weekly meeting and we know we go through these three different metrics that's in an agenda. You have something that you wanna talk about, it goes on the agenda. We stick to the agenda in the meetings. We realize that our Slack channel is a great, again, a great communication tool, but in order to eliminate distractions internally, we created a time sensitive channel so that if something is urgent and you see that time sensitive channel going off, it's bolded. That's what happens on Slack. When you need to check your messages, you gotta check that time sensitive one quickly. If you need something quickly. If you don't, you can slack them and just know you'll get a response whenever they can get to it. But if it's time sensitive, you put it in that Slack channel time sensitive. 

Erin (19:34): 

We also realized that let's ideate some solutions to our sales process and let's automate what we can. So when you come to us at Improve it and you ask us for an a meeting, you will get an email that is automated that gives you a link, gives you some information, and gives you a link to Jenna's Calendly so you can go ahead and book a meeting with her from there. Then we automated the process several other ways and this took intentional effort and time and collaboration with other solutions oriented service businesses. But it has served us so well. Then we looked at our sales process as a whole. We refined our proposals, we refined the way that we were following up with people and we refined the interactions to be as succinct and efficient as possible. Now, here is the next step in this ideation process, okay? 

Erin (20:36): 

Is proto type. So create a prototype. What is it that you want to see? How can you manifest what you want to happen? We created a manifesto in this process, okay? And it's called Working nine to Five. Why? We're exploring a Shorter Work Week. Now this was intentional, it was collaborated by myself, Jenna, and Nicole, our internal team. So keep this in mind at Improve It. There are three full-time W two employees. All of my other team members are contracting 10 99. They know that on Fridays that we are not gonna be on Slack. So if they need us Monday through Thursday is the time, however my contractors work, the hours that work best for them anyway. So this only really affects the three of us. And then our facilitation team only works when we have workshops, laugh breaks, keynotes, et cetera. So this doesn't affect them. 

Erin (21:37): 

It is just my internal and team members who are W two behind the scenes and this, this is who makes all the magic happen. We book all the things, we contract all the things and we make logistics happen so that our team can go out and do the amazing work that they are meant here to do. I have four additional contractors who are considered internal team and they're amazing and have always worked with what works best for their schedule. Anyway, so this is actually just affecting the three of us, myself, Nicole, and Jenna. And together we created this manifesto. So why are we doing this? I'm gonna read you this manifesto because I think it gives you such a beautiful outline and description of the why and what we hope to achieve. And this is what we're going to share. If anyone ever asks us, which you listening to this show, how and why we're doing this, it's a beautiful description and it's a prototype of what we hope to achieve. 

Erin (22:37): 

So why are we doing this? This is coming directly from that manifesto as a company and improve-it has decided to trial a four day work week with eight and a half hour workdays. Now studies have shown how shortening working hours greatly benefits employees and organizations. And as an organization, we want our team to be physically and mentally healthy, happy at work, in their personal lives, and become expert time managers. According to recent neuroscience research shared in Alex Sujan Kang's book, shorter, our brains actually keep working on problems when we turn our attention elsewhere. And scheduling rests periods after intensive work gives us time to recharge our batteries while allowing our creative subconscious to continue searching for solutions to problems that have alluded our conscious effort. I in, I'm just gonna pause right there really quick. I can tell you for free that when I have time away from work, those are when the best ideas come to me. 

Erin (23:46): 

Okay, so back to the manifesto side. Note, this team of recovering perfectionists want to live out our values to explore more, play and have fun and drive results in the same creative and outta the box approach. We take with all of our work. We want to retain our dream team. We got the dream team right now. Build sustainable careers, hit our revenue goals, enjoy our families, friends and hobbies outside of work, invest in our health and take more time to just be. Now, what do we hope to achieve by the end of this 90 day trial? We want to see our revenue maintained, or we want to exceed revenue levels that we expected in the last quarter of 2023. Now we are also going to measure the improved mental and physical health on our team by a creating a scaled structure on everything we need to be successful at work. 

Erin (24:45): 

So we're going to rate ourselves at the beginning of this experiment. And then at the end, how happy are you in your role? How burnt out are you at work? How optimistic are you? How overwhelmed do you feel at work? How meaningful have you found your work lately? How have you been sleeping? How are you feeling today physically? Are you able to keep up your morning and evening routine and are you feeling energized? Are all the questions that we are rating ourselves on? So we're taking the beginning metrics and then we're gonna analyze the metrics at the end of this quarter to see if there's been shifts. We're also hoping that our process improvements allow us to be efficient and research our and reach our benchmarks. So again, these are more efficient and productive meetings, setting boundaries with time. Examples are blocking out time to focus and time to meet with the team, utilizing slack's features to communicate availability with teammates, streamlining communication and setting clear expectations with clients, prioritizing our most important tasks and individual roles, clearing goals, eliminating what doesn't move the needle, and utilizing AI technology as support tools in our tasks. 

Erin (26:02): 

Now we also have individual benchmarks. Those are our team overall process improvements that we're hoping to see. Jenna has her own benchmarks because she leads the sales of all of our trainings and all of our keynotes. I have my own metrics is I am overseeing our pre-launch of our book as well as Nicole, whose marketing efforts go right into line with those me the, the metrics of the pre-launch as well. So here's how we're going to achieve this. We all want this experiment to work, right? We're manifesting success by creating contingency plans, anticipating what if scenarios, redesigning meeting agendas to maximize efficiency, blocking our calendars to account for focus time and meeting time using Slack to communicate availability with the team, measuring everything we can, holding ourselves and our teammates accountable, automating what can be automated, asking ourselves if we're moving the needle with each task and ultimately working smarter, not harder. 

Erin (27:11): 

Now, when will it start? This started on Monday, October 2nd, 2023. And starting then full-time W two employees will work an eight and a half hour day Monday through Thursday. Here are some of the contingencies that we put in this manifesto. What if a client contacts me on a Friday with a time sensitive in inquiry? Or what if an urgent logistics email regarding an upcoming event comes in on Friday from a client? What do we do? Or what if a lead comes in on Friday or someone is referred to us while we're out of the office? Here is our contingency plan as of today. Now know if as we continue to go through these 90 days, we are gonna update this because we're gonna see things along the way. But here's where it stands today. We know that we cannot predict every scenario that'll come our way. 

Erin (28:05): 

But to make this work, we will check our email inboxes twice on Fridays at approximately 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM whatever time zone we're in 'cause we're in different time zones while we're out of the office. And we will only, only, only, this is the key word, only address urgent emails from clients or referrals. That's it. If you have an internal question regarding a client that can be answered. But if it's, Hey, can you review this document? Those will wait until Monday. Now, why do we think this will work? As a team, we know we will fail during this trial and we will learn new ways of working as long as we communicate often with our teammates and clients. We set expectations, we measure goals, and we check in with ourselves and each other. We see this as being a success. Now, we're also grateful to partner with forward thinking and people first organizations. Our clients don't just understand that we are a creative and progressive organization. They celebrate it. We partner with our clients like we work with each other internally, seeing the person first and leading with yes. And so that is our manifesto for the four day work week. 

Erin (29:28): 

We are now in the next stage, which is testing. We are testing these three day weekends and know that we will share the results with you in future episodes. So you can 

Erin (29:40): 

Implement this and share it with whoever needs it. Oh my friends, this framework really made it easy to implement. Again, this was pulled from the book shorter. I am not happy that I had a concussion, but I am so grateful for the lesson that it taught me. And I'm so grateful that I'm able to share this lesson with my team because they matter so much to me and I'm so grateful I get to share this lesson with you. It is my hope that this four day work week helps me stay clear on my purpose. It helps me stay clear on my priorities and it helps me live a life of intentionality and joy because I need that joy. I need this tea kettle to be so filled so I can spill that joy into your cup every week. I can spill that joy over to my team. I can spill that joy over to my family and I can spill it to my friends and the clients we get to serve. 

Erin (30:51): 

I need a day to get my life together, to just run errands, to do chores or simply just to lay down and do what I want to do. Can I just tell you how excited I am to have a day where I could potentially just lay and read a book? So Monday through Thursday I will be leader and mom and wife. On Fridays I am me and on Saturdays and Sundays I can just focus on being mom and wife. I hope that you took something away from this, that our journey inspires you or it gives you some type of idea to bring back to your team. Whether it's, you know, I know my organization will never go for this four day work week, but I have ideas that can make us work shorter workdays or I have ideas that are gonna make my day way more efficient. 

Erin (31:46): 

That's what I'm hoping you walk away with from this episode. And just know one voice can change a room. You can bring this episode to your organization. I'm also happy, happy, happy to answer any questions. Feel free to dmm me to send me an info. Info at learn to improve it.com. Email or it's at Aaron. Can I use words today? It's at y'all. Hold on. I'm not even gonna edit this. Just so you can see the real deal. My Instagram handle is it's Aaron deal. Okay, that's it. You can send me a there. The words came out of my mouth finally. So I want you to know, I want you to follow that because the week of this podcast launching, we are doing a giveaway of this incredible book shorter. So if you are listening to this show, the week of its launch or the week after, I want you to go to Instagram, follow its Aaron deal and figure out how to enter. 

Erin (32:52): 

You will see the post for the giveaway on my profile page. Okay? So go there. I will send you a copy of this book and I'll also send you a manifesto so you can have that to take back to your team as well. So here's your homework. You know, I love to give you that homework. I want you to go follow its Aaron deal on Instagram and keep an eye out for this giveaway. And then I also want you to listen to last week's episode with Dr. Morgan. Cut lip. Know that all month long we're talking about radical rest. I want you to take that and put that into action in your life. We all need more rest. You need it? Okay? If today's episode moves you, I want you to share this. This is part three of your homework. One, it's to follow it's Erin deal and look out for the giveaway two. 

Erin (33:47): 

It's to listen to this episode with Dr. Morgan Cutlip, which was last week's episode. And three, I want you to share this message. I want you to share it on LinkedIn, share it on Instagram. Send it to a friend who's been thinking about implementing this for their organization or team. Because this isn't going to be the only episode about the four day work week. I'm gonna give you updates as we continue. I will give you the wins, but I'm gonna give y'all the real fails 'cause you know that's how I do. So you know what I'm gonna say? I want you to keep failing, keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring and you need more radical rest in your life. My friend, I'm so proud of you for taking time to listen to today's show. Again, share it, pass it. I will see you here next week. Improve it. Improve It podcast. 

 

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